Spender

Dalkey Tale: My Mother and Michael Collins

Posted by barneyspender on February 18, 2017
Posted in: Dublin, History, Ireland, Spender. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments
The baby born in battle: Veronica with her mother Dorothea. (Cookson family archive)

The baby born in battle: Veronica with her mother Dorothea. (Cookson family archive)

My mother was born in the middle of a gun battle. A cold January night at the height of the Irish Civil War; the republican knives forged in the furnace of the Easter Rising and dipped in the blood of Michael Collins himself.

According to family legend, Collins played his part in keeping my grandparents alive.

My grandfather Reginald Cookson had returned from the trenches of the Somme in October 1916 with one eye fewer than when he had set out.

His reward once he had recovered sufficiently from his wounds was a posting to Dublin. Second-lieutenant in the Royal West Kents when he was machine gunned in the heavy turnip fields of Warlencourt, he was now a Lieutenant in the Machine Gun Corps.

At the end of the First World War, he decided to stay in Dublin and train as a doctor at the Royal College of Surgeons. The wedding photographs of Reginald and his bride Dorothea Glen in October 1919 show him still in uniform. Undoubtedly he remained close to the army world. He would have heard about the appalling massacre at Croke Park in 1920 but he played no part.

His life now centred on learning how to save lives rather than take them.

Second Lieutenant RG Cookson in May 1916 (Spender family collection)

Second Lieutenant Reginald Cookson in May 1916 (Cookson family collection)

For the republicans this was a paradox. Another was his conversion to Catholicism, along with Dorothea, not long after they were married. This didn’t pose too many problems on Reginald’s English side of the family but for Dorothea it was a crisis.

Her father was the Church of Ireland vicar in Pomeroy, a protestant outpost in the largely Catholic county of Tyrone. The family wasn’t impressed although the fact that her sister Eileen was already married to RM Gwynn may have played a part in this tale.

Gwynn was a professor and future vice-provost of Trinity College, Dublin. And he was also key in setting up the Irish Citizen Army which would make their stand at the GPO at Easter 1916.

On the morning of 21 November, 1920 came the purge, as 14 British officers, suspected by the republicans of being intelligence or spies, were taken out in one swoop across the city.

The week before, Reginald and Dorothea had left their rented address in Merrion Square. It may have saved their lives.

sorrento-tceHe had found a residence in Dalkey, just outside Dublin; a handsome storied house which looked out across the Irish Sea. These days it is a much-sought after address, the preserve of rock stars and racing drivers. My grandparents moved in to 6 Sorrento Terrace (left).

The suspicions remained.

“It was all rather beastly,” said Veronica many years later as she recounted the tales told to her by Reginald and Dorothea.

“There would be this rat-a-tat-tat on the door and then they would shoot through the letter box. It was a lousy trick. Fortunately they never hit anybody. They were rotten shots.

“There was one time when they pushed a little coffin through the letter box.”

For Reginald, this was beyond the pale. Since getting married, they had already had one child Mary, born in 1921, and Dorothea was now expecting number two.

“Well it was rather annoying,” Veronica would explain in typical understatement. “So he thought he had better try and put a stop to it.”

cookson-wedding

Reginald and Dorothea on their wedding day (Cookson family archive)

And so Reginald made inquiries. As a young doctor he would often be summoned to make calls in the villages of County Dublin. He surreptitiously asked his patients if they knew how he could get a message to Michael Collins whom he trusted more than Eamonn de Valera.

It seems somebody whispered an address in his ear. Perhaps it was a patient, “Docker” Mullins maybe – that was what we were always led to believe – or perhaps it was Gwynn, the cultured Trinity man with the ear of Collins.

So, one Sunday morning after Mass he put on his bicycle clips and pedalled out to the Dublin mountains. There is no note of exactly where he went that day or how long it took him, but he kept on peddling, kept on climbing until he reached a certain whitewashed house. More of a cottage, really.

dublin-mountain

Into the Dublin mountains

The doors were closed, the windows shuttered, there was no smoke edging out of the chimney. He wondered first if he had got the right house and then if his patient had set him up for an ambush. He became concerned and banged on the door. There was no answer. He banged again, this time harder. Again, there was no response. Becoming increasingly concerned, he hammered the door with his fist one last time. It was locked and bolted.

He bent down and put on his clips and then made for his bike. As he was climbing on to the saddle, a shutter in an upstairs window creaked open and an elderly woman pushed her nose through. He couldn’t make her out as she had a shawl drawn over her head.

“What is it you’re after with all that banging?” she shouted down.

He hesitated as another window opened just a couple of inches. He couldn’t see a face but later he told Veronica that he thought he saw the barrel of a rifle.

He took a breath and turned back to the old woman.

“I just want to send a message to Michael Collins. Docker told me to come.”

“Docker Mullins is it?”

Reginald nodded.

“It is.”

A pause as the old lady’s nose disappeared for a moment.

“Well, you have wasted your time. There’s no Michael Collins here. Nor Parnell neither. So you can’t see him. Or Parnell.”

michael-collins

The Big Fella: Michael Collins

It was frustrating but Reginald wasn’t prepared to leave it at that. He hadn’t ridden all morning up into the mountains for nothing. His young family was at risk.

“I don’t need to see Mr Collins,” he said. “I just need to get a message to him. It’s important. My family is in danger and I need it to stop.”

Another pause as the old lady backed away again from the window into the shadows of the upstairs room.

Reginald began to weigh up his options once more, not just for the next five minutes but for the next five years; maybe longer. With thumb and forefinger he gently smoothed his moustache, felt rising stubble on his chin. To stay in Ireland, where Dorothea felt most at home, or take off for England? It was undoubtedly safer in England and there was also more chance he could land a good practice.

His thoughts, though, were interrupted as the old woman appeared again.

“What is it you’re after saying in this message of yours? I am not promising it will get delivered but if Mr Collins was here listening to you, what would you be telling him?”

Reginald told his story. Short and to the point. Yes, he had served with the British in the Somme, he explained, but that was over. He had had enough of war. He was a student doctor and wanted to help people, all people. He explained about his conversion to Catholicism, his young family, the coffin and the gunshots through the letter box.

“If Mr Collins were here I would ask him to do something to stop these unwarranted attacks.”

“And where is it you’re living?”

As he called out the Dalkey address, he noticed the second window, the one where he thought he had seen a gun, close. The woman looked down on him.

“Very well. I will see what we can do. But like I said, no promises. Now get off with you. It’s getting dark and you’ve a way to travel on that contraption. God bless you.”

And with that the window closed.

Reginald whispered thanks and this time climbed on to his bike and began to thread his way through the mountains, down the lanes and back to Dalkey. Had there been any point to the exercise? Would Collins get the message? And even if he did, what could he or would he do?

Who knows if the woman got the message to Collins himself; perhaps it was the Big Fella up there at the second window listening first-hand to Reginald’s story.

For sure, though, she got the message to someone with influence because from that night on, there was a guard posted on the gate of 6 Sorrento Terrace. He and Reginald spoke about the weather and the Gaelic Football but never directly about why the man was always close to the gate. Reginald had it on good information, though, that he was one of Collins’ men.

There were no more shootings through the letter box or sinister little coffins; young Dr Cookson was allowed to set about his practice in peace.

After the battle for the Four Courts, the building lay in total ruin. (National Library of Ireland)

After the battle for the Four Courts, the building lay in total ruin. (National Library of Ireland)

Except on the night of January 10, 1923.

Collins was dead by then; in favour of the peace treaty with London, he had been assassinated by fellow Irishmen in County Cork just a few months earlier. The Four Courts of Dublin lay in rubble.

Meanwhile, Dorothea was in labour; Reginald sent out for the midwife and then rolled up his sleeves. He was a doctor after all.

At which point a battle broke out at the end of the road…

I was always sceptical about this story because as the historian John Dorney points out, the nearest recorded skirmish to this date came over a week later on January 19 when a small IRA Second Dublin Brigade Column, five men led by Paddy O’Brennan and William Meaghan, attacked a National Army post at Dalkey Railway station.

Nothing official for January 10 or 11 so the eyebrow was certainly arched until I came across what might be corroborative evidence in the pages of Oliver St John Gogarty, another medical man who had, incidentally, performed the autopsy on his friend Michael Collins.

Gogarty describes how one night when he was in Dalkey, as battle broke out, he was lured to a car and kidnapped by anti-treaty forces. That night was January 10.

Again dipping into family folklore, the noise of gunfire on Sorrento Terrace got so tiresome that the midwife took matters into her own hands, throwing open the front door and marching down the path to the gate.

“Would you ever stop all of that,” she shouted to both sets of guns, each perched behind a wall.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t you know there’s a baby trying to be born in here only it can’t because you are making too much off a rabble. Get off with you and do your stupid shooting somewhere else.”

The guns fell silent, the battle moved on; the baby was born.

Joan Veronica Amelia Cookson.

My mother. Born in a gunfight.

©Barney Spender 2017

Follow me on Twitter @bspender

 

veronica_portrait-001

Veronica Spender

(nee Cookson)

Born Dalkey, County Dublin, 11 January 1923

Died Yeovil, Somerset, 25 January 2017

 

Brief Encounter … with Bowie

Posted by barneyspender on January 11, 2016
Posted in: Culture, Music, Spender. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Bowie 1 Like many people this morning, my thoughts are with David Bowie who has died in New York from cancer at the tender age of 69.

I heard the news at breakfast, much as I had done when news of John Lennon’s death flashed through the British airwaves 35 years ago. That was in New York as well. Dangerous place, obviously.

And as the news slowly filtered in, my mind drifted back to a late summer’s evening in London in 1986 when our paths crossed for the first and, as it turned out, only time. I doubt it was a moment that writ large in the great man’s memory-banks in the 30 years that followed but I am afraid I still revel in the fact that once upon a time, I met David Bowie.

GROWING UP WITH BOWIE

As with so many people, Bowie’s music has played across the background of my youth and my adult life. At school in the late 1970s, I recall heading over to Rupert Bates’ room to drink coffee and listen to the single of Ashes to Ashes. Again and again and again. It was that kind of a song.

At university in the early 1980s I was in a Players’ production of The Duchess of Malfi, directed by Declan Hughes. He was an exciting director to work and learn with, Tarantino-esque in his musical vision. All his plays had fantastic soundtracks, even the Jacobean tragedy of Malfi.

Bowie LowHe opened the play with a tableau of corpses, beautifully lit by John Comisky, and the haunting strains of Bowie’s Warszawa. It was compelling theatre.

I danced, or did my feeble impression, and chatted up girls to songs like Let’s Dance and China Girl. I liked him as an actor too. Not just big shows like Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. I was particularly taken with him in a BBC production of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal. And many years later when I had kids, I revelled in the way they clicked with Changes when it came up in Shrek, albeit in a non-Bowie version. They instantly recognized the original when I had Hunky Dory on in the car. And later when we introduced them to the television series Life on Mars, they again jumped at the music. Bowie for all generations.

But let me tell you about that night in 1986.

METAMORPHOSIS

The Mermaid Theatre in Blackfriars: the first theatre to be built in the City of London since the 17th century

The Mermaid Theatre in Blackfriars: the first theatre to be built in the City of London since the 17th century

I had left Dublin in the summer and found my first job in London, as stage doorman at the Mermaid Theatre, an oasis in the cultural desert of the City. The theatre had been set up by Bernard Miles for precisely that purpose. The fact that it was so close to one of Shakespeare’s old theatres in Blackfriars gave it a borrowed heritage. Miles would drop in regularly to say hello to the workers. John Junkin too.

Barbara Penney was the theatre manager and she had done a deal to bring in Stephen Berkoff’s Metamorphosis on an eight-week run. Tim Roth, pre-Reservoir Dogs and Hollywood stardom,  played Gregor Samsa with Linda Marlowe, Saskia Reeves, Gary Olsen and Berkoff himself miming their way through Kafka’s tale of dung beetles and isolation.

It was outstanding and quickly became the hot ticket in London. It became usual to have big names come to the stage door to meet the actors. Usually they were old theatre friends but sometimes they were big names: Dustin Hoffman came through as did Topol, Roger Daltry, Adam (of Ants fame) and even a rather pop-eyed Jeff Goldblum who was charmingly giggly as he asked to meet with Tim Roth.

“Yeah you know, I don’t know him but I thought it would be kinda neat…you know The Fly meets The Beetle?”

METAMORPHOSIS_MERMAIDHe laughed and I laughed with him. I had been to see him in The Fly just a few weeks before at the Phoenix in East Finchley. It was rather a nice idea. Had I been a hack at that stage I am sure I could have made a few bob with the tabs on that angle.

Then one evening it came to pass.

Another superb performance, we could hear the audience whooping and cheering at the curtain call. Then the cast came off stage, drained and sweating, and wearily headed up the red staircase to their dressing rooms.

At this point there was usually a short lull. The audience couldn’t come through to us direct from the auditorium. They had to exit the theatre, walk around the building into Puddle Dock and come in at the stage door.

As usual there was a huddle of autograph hunters gathering outside and a line of well-wishers queueing up to talk to the stage doorman: me.

Waiting at the back of the line was a tall, slender man in a well-cut suit. He hovered as others came and went. Finally, when there was no one left in the line, he stepped forward gingerly and smiled.

“Hello. I wonder, would it be possible to go up and see Steven Berkoff. He’s a friend of mine.”

There was a pause. Not that I was waiting for him to say any more. I was just star struck. Standing in front of me was David Bowie.

David. Fucking. Bowie.

Standing.

In front of me.

And asking my permission.

To go and see his mate.

I blinked and gathered myself. Tapped out Berkoff’s dressing room number.

Steven Berkoff performing in his 1986 adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis (Photo: Roger Morton)

Steven Berkoff performing in his 1986 adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Photo: Roger Morton)

Of course they were friends. They had just made Absolute Beginners together. Julian Temple had been panned for it but there had been some good moments, notably Bowie and Berkoff. It was another film I had seen recently at the Phoenix on a late night double bill with Stop Making Sense.

I had gone to see it with Omar Shawkat, a would-be actor from Louisville who had somehow landed on the doorstep in East Finchley when I shared a flat with Donald Clarke and Roddy Gibson. Omar had insisted that it was de rigeur in Kentucky during Stop Making Sense to leap out of your seat and run around the auditorium.

Sounded a bit daft but fuelled by a couple of pints of Old Speckled Hen we had given it a go. But what they get up to in Louisville didn’t go down so well in north London and we were in no uncertain terms invited to cease. Absolute beginners. That was us.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me just check in with him. He may be coming down.”

“Of course.”

A pause. Then phone in hand, I looked up at him.

“It is Mr Bowie, isn’t it?” I asked stressing the pronunciation of the name. Bowie as in Bowie Knife as opposed to Bowie pronounced Bow-wow-wow.

“Yes,” he smiled. “Bowie.”

I nodded and smiled back as Berkoff answered the phone.

“Hi Steven, Barney here … There is a gentleman down at the stage door to see you. Mr Bowie… Just wondering if you are on your way down or whether you would like me to direct him to your dressing room…sure…not a problem…I will do that…ok…cheers.”

I put down the phone and stood up. I wanted to be on eye level with the great man.

David Bowie in Julian Temple's Absolute Beginners which also featured Steven Berkoff

David Bowie in Julian Temple’s Absolute Beginners which also featured Steven Berkoff

“Steven says you should go on up to his dressing room. Have you been before?”

“No.”

“Ok, well they don’t have numbers here. They have names. Stephen is in Cripplegate. Just go up the stairs and turn to the left. You will see it on the right hand side.”

“Top of the stairs, turn left.”

“That’s it.”

“Thank you, Barney.”

He turned towards the stairs and headed up to Berkoff’s dressing room. I remained standing for what seemed like minutes, hours. Time stopped. Had I heard right? Had David Bowie just thanked my by name?

And that wasn’t quite the end. When he and Berkoff came down the stairs about 20 minutes later to head off for dinner at Joe Allen’s – everyone went to Joe Allen’s – he said it again.

Berkoff handed over his dressing room key and boomed a parting farewell. I liked Berkoff immensely but he did like to boom.

As he followed him out of the stage door, Bowie turned towards the stagedoorman.

“Thanks very much, Barney. Have a good evening.”

And he was gone. Only later did I kick myself for not looking closer at his eyes. I had heard about the different coloured eyes but in spite of looking straight into them, I hadn’t registered them. Never mind. I had just met David Bowie.

Ok, so our total mutual interaction on Planet Earth was probably under two minutes but for me it was so much more than that. He gave me the gift of a story that night which I have occasionally unfurled in the interim. And of course there is his music, his art.

Bowie may have gone but we will always have the music. That is an amazing gift for all of us.

Thanks Mr Bowie.

©Barney Spender 2016

Follow me on Twitter @bspender

The Room

Posted by barneyspender on July 13, 2014
Posted in: Short story, Spender. Tagged: , . Leave a comment
Ray Wolf A sketch of her grandmother by Carla Mackinnon

Ray Wolf
A sketch of her grandmother by Carla Mackinnon

My aunt Ray Wolf, who died last month at the grand old age of 99, was a pretty extraordinary woman. It didn’t seem to matter who you were, where you were from, what age you were, she would give you the benefit of the doubt, which is probably why she seemed to touch so many lives and make many friends.

At her funeral, we heard plenty about her life, but perhaps the most remarkable testament to her philosophy of life came from a short story written by Naomi Bennett, the cousin of Dee Robinson, a close friend of Ray’s daughter Francesca.

I was struck by the story and asked Naomi if I could post it here, just to make it available to a wider public. This was the response I received.

“I was terribly sorry not to be able to attend Ray’s funeral and honoured that something I had written years ago would be read at the funeral. Of course you are welcome to use it. Again, I’m honoured that you would want to do so.

“Ray was one of the kindest, most generous people I have ever known. She used to describe her brother, Christopher, as someone who radiated goodness. I always thought that was an apt description of them both. I can’t quite believe Ray is really gone. There will never be another like her.”

And so, here is Naomi Bennett’s short story The Room.

Whenever I stay with Ray at her West Hampstead home in London, England, I am given the little bedroom at the top of the stairs. It has a single bed covered in blankets and quilts to stave off the damp chill of life without central heating.

Examining the bed coverings is like being on an archaeological dig where each layer reflects a different civilisation.

The sheets are old and patched. They speak of a time before everything became expendable. There is a blanket from World War Two when Ray was in the WRENS. It is warm and woollen and unashamedly serviceable. There’s a quilt with embroidered flowers, sewn by Ray’s mother in the 1920s for those of her children still in the nursery.

I remember Ray telling me that she briefly struggled with embroidery, herself, during the year before her mother finally allowed her to travel in Europe to study singing; the year she was in a school where young ladies learned ‘housewifery’, which included needlework, the management of a household, and the genteel supervision of servants. There’s a cheaper quilt of a synthetic fibre, a Safeway’s special from Ray’s time as a secretary after her husband, Simmy, died.

On top is an Indian bedspread, one of the artifacts of her children’s hippy days. And next to the bed, there’s a small oak night table covered with a cloth from Simmy’s Polish-Jewish family, and flowers from the garden, in a small vase. A chest of drawers just fits next to a clothes rod with a curtain drawn round it. There’s a long string that pulls on a filament of electric heat on the wall.  The rug on the floor is ancient. And there are two pictures on the wall, a landscape and a portrait of an old man, both in wooden frames.

I don’t always look at details in rooms, but I’ve spent hours trying to take this one right into my cells.  Its shabbiness and beauty and history are almost like a song, a song that says what’s important is not lost and everything is sacred and yes, there is a home.

When I first met Ray, I was twenty-one. After she’d gotten me to climb over a fence because we had to see Kenwood, a London park, even though it was closed; and after she’d gotten me to lie on the ground looking at the daffodils from their own level right into their faces, and after she’d shaken up my belief system because I hadn’t known that people old enough to be my mother did that sort of thing; we went to 36 Westbere Rd.

Walking into that house felt like walking into the happy ending of a children’s story. We sat in the garden and talked.

She said: “One doesn’t like to hurt other people, does one?” and I, I who valued my rage more than anything in the universe, I who had not yet learned that it is love not power that transforms victimisation; I said to my astonishment: “No, one doesn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Because for the first time in my life, I believed someone didn’t want to hurt anybody and in response I didn’t want to hurt anybody either.

And that’s why I took in the little room at the top of the stairs as much as I could, that little yet infinite room at the top of the stairs. For it was in that room, I rediscovered faith.

©Naomi Bennett

 

Naomi Bennett is a psychotherapist who writes and paints. She lives in Canada.

And if you have memories of Ray, then feel free to add your anecdote below

 

Obituary: Ray Wolf 1914-2014

Posted by barneyspender on July 8, 2014
Posted in: Culture, History, Spender. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 6 Comments

Ray Wolf (Spender) 2Ray Wolf, the last of the grandchildren of Edward Spender, founder of the Western Morning News, has died at the age of 99. A singer in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s, she later worked for naval intelligence during World War Two.

Rachel – always known as Ray – was born in Hooe, Plymouth in October 1914, the fifth of seven children. Above her, Mary, Arthur, Honor and Ted; below Christopher and Tony. Her mother, Helen Frances Champernowne, was born and brought up at Dartington Hall, the last generation of Champernownes to live there.

Her father was Arthur Edmund Spender, son of Edward, founder and first editor of the WMN, who had drowned in 1878 with his two eldest sons.

Edmund was also a journalist who served on the board of the Western Morning News. He also spent a year in 1908-09 as Mayor of Plymouth. He died in 1923 of a burst appendix when she was just eight.

Her early years were spent around Plymouth and Dartmoor. One of her earliest memories was the “huge thuddering clash“ as she and her mother rang the church bell on Armistice Day 1918.

After studying domestic science, she decided music was her calling. From 1935 to ‘38 she studied singing in Gissen, near Frankfurt, and in Berlin. Hitler was already in power and Ray watched helplessly as her teacher lost her opera students one by one; they were ordered to go elsewhere as the teacher was not a member of the Nazi party.

Marriage of Figaro1938

Marriage of Figaro, Glyndebourne 1938

Ray considered the brownshirts “just thugs” and put her foot down at her mother’s suggestion she return home.

“There’s no music in England!” she insisted, changing her mind only when her mother enticed her with a ticket to Glyndebourne – a programme that included Verdi’s Macbeth and the Mozart double of Don Giovanni and Marriage of Figaro.

When war was declared, Ray worked for the Red Cross at Bovington Camp in Dorset before transferring to Salisbury where she was a nurse. In 1941, she joined the Wrens.

She learnt Morse – when training she said that even the birds seemed to sing in Morse “da dit de da da” – and as a fluent German speaker she found herself working with intelligence. On being posted to Abbotscliff near Dover, she worked 24-hour shifts alone in the tower taking radar bearings and plotting the position of German ships.

Ray Wolf (Spender) 1On one occasion a German fighter plane was flying so low that the pilot leant out of his cockpit and started firing his pistol at her, prompting a swift leap into a bed of stinging nettles which offered some prickly cover.

She also intercepted messages from E-boats and submarines in German and Morse, and sent these through to Bletchley Park for decoding.

After D-Day, Ray was sent to SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) in London to look through captured German documents. She then volunteered to go to France where she was again a sought-after translator.

Throughout the war, she sang for the troops, collecting a good review from the Kentish Observer and Canterbury Chronicle for a concert in which she appeared in May 1944.

“A notable inclusion was the appearance of a Wren Petty Officer who charmed the packed audience and who is familiar to hosts of radio listeners – Ray Spender, soprano … An appealing figure in a dark evening gown and a hundred per cent smile, she was certainly one of the hits of this outstanding show.”

She had a clear high soprano voice and sang professionally for years – lieder (her great love), opera, and light music on BBC radio with The Stargazers (see below) and Cliff Adams Singers.

Ray and Simmy fell in love with the balcony of their first flat and failed to notice it didn't have a kitchen

Ray and Simmy

On her return from France in 1945, she married Simon Wolf, whom she had met three years earlier on the promise of a decent cup of coffee. Simmy was a Polish Jew, the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust and, like her father and grandfather, he was a journalist.

After the war, Ray settled into married life but in spite of having two children, she also found time to work as a German translator and British Council Guide.

Widowed in 1966, she remained busy, learning Hebrew and working on a Kibbutz, training as a music teacher and working for the British Legion.

Great-grandmother

Great-grandmother

She also enjoyed entertaining. Her dinner table in north London was a regular venue for lively exchanges on politics, history, culture and laughter. All topped off with music. If guests missed the last bus home, Ray would often sleep under the dining room table so she could give them her bed.

She was fiercely independent, living alone and negotiating the London bus service, until she was 98 when she moved into a care home.

Ray is survived by her two children, Nick and Francesca, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Ray Wolf (née Spender) born Hooe 11 October 1914; died London 11 June 2014

©Francesca Wolf/Barney Spender 2014

The Tragedy of Tregonhawke Bay

Posted by barneyspender on June 9, 2014
Posted in: History, Spender. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments
EdwardSpenderMemorial

Tregonhawke Memorial (Photo: Henry Spender)

When I was a youngster, I was taken by my father to see a memorial at Tregonhawke on the cliffs above Whitsand Bay in Cornwall. The view from the memorial is quite lovely, a long sandy beach, some rocks and the white-crested waves lapping rather than crashing into the shore.

Perhaps it isn’t the best water for surfers – there are better places in Cornwall – but it is highly inviting for swimmers. On a hot summer’s day nothing could be more perfect than to pick your way down the steep path and stretch out on the sand. Enjoy the sun. Take a swim.

Except. Maybe not for my family. Not if they cast a glance at the granite memorial with the Celtic cross. For on it there is a legend.

“In the beloved memory of
Edward Spender
Aged 44 years
And of his sons
Reginald and Sidney
Who were drowned whilst bathing
Beneath this cliff
On Whit-Sunday June 9 1878”

The story of the family tragedy was that my great-grandfather, Edward Spender, had died in quicksand one sunny summer’s day on a beach in Cornwall, along with two of his young sons, Reginald and Sidney.

On top of that, so the story ran, my great-grandmother, who was heavily pregnant, was watching from the top of the cliffs as the three of them disappeared. The unborn child was later baptized Reginald Edward Sidney– he would always be Uncle Rex to my father – as a commemoration to the three victims.

In fact, that is not quite the whole truth. Some of it is right but the details are somewhat different.

Let’s roll back the years.

 

EDWARD SPENDER: NEWSPAPER MAN

Edward Spender was a highly successful newspaperman at the time of his death in 1878

Edward Spender was a highly successful newspaperman at the time of his death in 1878

In 1878, Edward Spender was what you might want to describe as a successful man. Born in Bath in 1834, son of a prominent surgeon, he had gone into journalism and happened to do so at the perfect time.

As a young man, he would doubtless have read Howard Russell’s accounts in The Times of the war in Crimea and noted the speed with which they had reached London. The industrial revolution which saw Britain opening up to cross-country train service and the wire service made the business of reporting news far quicker than it had ever been.

Edward Spender saw the potential for a daily newspaper in the regions, immediately able to report what was going on in London; in Parliament, in the courts, in the heart of the nation.

To this day Spenders have been good at spotting openings and ideas, less good at following them through, lacking perhaps the business savvy to make them work. If Edward was like that, then he was also lucky. His sister Caroline had married a man called William Saunders, eleven years Edward’s senior who also saw the possibilities. And had the capital and business acumen to do something about it.

They went into partnership and in 1860, when Edward was just 26 years old, they set up the Western Morning News as a daily newspaper in Plymouth, some 238 miles (383 kilometres) south-west of London. Saunders was the business, Spender was the editorial.

Four years later and now a married man, Spender opened up the newspaper’s London office. Contemporary accounts call him the “Prince of the Lobby” although there do not appear to be any records to that effect at the House of Commons. Sadly, much of the Western Morning News archive went up in smoke during the air raids of the Second World War.

An article which appeared in the Western Morning News in June 1978, marking the centenary of his death, says he was a prolific contributor to periodicals and certainly he must have had a few strong connections as The Times and the Manchester Guardian both ran obituaries.

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Spender’s book was described as “sensible” by The Spectator

He found time to travel to Norway, writing a series of articles for the London Quarterly Review. His book Fjord, Isle and Tor, published in 1870, also includes pieces on the Channel Islands, the Scilly Isles and, somewhat presciently, Cornwall. No mention of Tregonhawke, though. The Spectator called it “a very sensible book, which anyone who meditates a first visit to the countries treated of should provide himself with”.

My grandfather Arthur Edmund Spender was only seven when his father drowned but he must have been quite a role model. Edmund would also go on to become a journalist, acting as editor and managing director of the Western Morning News. When his book Two Winters in Norway came out in 1902, it had echoes of his father’s over 30 years before.

Edward’s reputation as a journalist may also have had a small influence on two of his nephews although it was mainly through the patronage of William Saunders, their aunt Catherine’s husband, that John Alfred and Harold took to the press.

JA Spender was to become a highly influential editor of the Westminster Gazette; Harold Spender was less corporate in his freelance approach and wrote a number of books such as At the Sign of the Guillotine, Byron and Greece and The Cauldron of Europe. I have one of the biographies he wrote on General Smuts. It sits proudly on my bookshelf alongside the poetry of his son, the best known of our clan, Stephen Spender.

 

THE SUMMER OF 1878

Two weeks before Spender went down to Plymouth, HMS Pinafore opened in London

Two weeks before Spender went down to Plymouth, HMS Pinafore opened in London

The early part of 1878 had provided its fair share of stories to keep a newsman busy. On the lighter side was the arrival in London in January of Cleopatra’s Needle. Sadly it wasn’t actually erected on the Embankment until September but certainly its initial arrival from Egypt spawned a good few column inches. On a more serious note, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli sent the fleet into the Dardanelles as the Ottomans squared off with the Russians.

On May 25, Edward Spender and his wife Ellen were more than likely present at the opening of Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore at the Opera Comique.

Edward and Ellen had married on February 18, 1862 at St Andrew’s Church in Plymouth. Her father was also a doctor. Thirteen-year-old Reginald and eleven-year-old Sydney were the eldest of the growing brood.

Edward may even have had time to put the finishing touches on a piece about the Ottoman’s handing over Cyprus to the British on June 4 before he set off on the train for Plymouth on Friday June 7, a chance to combine some business with an outing for his two sons who were boarders at Honiton Grammar School (cost 30 pounds a year), which later became Allhallows.

As Edward and his family were now based in London, he made a point of staying with his wife’s brother Russell Rendle. Ellen was well advanced in yet another pregnancy which may have been why she decided not to go down to see the boys that weekend.

Edward picked up the boys in Honiton and then continued on the train, across Dartmoor, down to Plymouth. Perhaps Edward went into the newspaper office to see Saturday’s paper put to bed and he may have spent some time writing on Saturday for Monday’s edition.

A Saturday evening spent with the boys and their uncle Russell during which they may have hatched their plan to go to church – it was Whit Sunday after all – and then head for the coast. Whitsand Bay at Tregonhawke, just a few miles to the south-west of Plymouth.

 

ON THE BEACH

Whitsands Bay is an attractive place to while away a summer's afternoon (Photo: Henry Spender)

Whitsands Bay is an attractive place to while away a summer’s afternoon (Photo: Henry Spender)

The Victorians believed in physical health. Cricket was already a summer passion – England had played Australia in Melbourne just a year before in the first ever Test match – while rugby was already thriving in the heartland of the south-west. Plymouth RFC and Devonport Albion RFC had both been formed within the previous three years.

The Wenlock Olympian Games had been set up by William Penny Brooks in the village of Much Wenlock in 1850 and was well-established.

Muscular Christianity was more than just a concept; it was an ideal, a vital foundation stone as Britain expanded its influence and wealth through the Empire.

Reginald and Sidney would have been all in favour of a day at the beach, even if it wasn’t that easy to reach. They would have had to pick their way from the top of the cliffs down a steep narrow path down to the Rame Head end of the beach.

The three Spenders headed into the chilly sea while Russell bade his time on the sand. When he noticed one of the boys go too far out, he decided it was best to join them in the water.

He stumbled as he entered the water. The following account is taken from the Western Morning News of June 10, 1878.

WMN“As he raised himself he saw Mr Spender standing with his face towards the shore, in water apparently only four feet deep with a wave advancing on him from behind.

“As it approached Mr Spender seemed to rise with it but when it had passed over neither he nor his sons were to be seen.

“In vain Mr Rendle – at that moment more surprised than alarmed – looked for them round the rocks and out seawards.

“They were gone and after a few minutes’ fruitless searching and watching, Mr Rendle ran to the coastguard station, a mile distant and fetched the men but they only confirmed his fears.

“Evidently Mr Spender and his two sons had been swept under and drowned by the action of the waves on the treacherous sand.”

The body of Edward Spender was washed up on Whitsands three days later, close to where he had last been seen by his brother-in-law.

The boys were not discovered until June 22, almost two weeks later. They were floating in the water about a mile away.

 

WHAT CAUSED THE DEATHS?

Because of Edward’s prominence there was plenty of coverage of the tragedy and speculation about the cause of the drownings.

The bay is notorious for its rip tides so the obvious conclusion is that the three of them were bowled over by a big wave and sucked out to sea.

But the fact that Edward’s body was found close by led the Western Morning News to come to a different conclusion: that they were knocked over and buried in the sand long enough to drown.

At the inquest, evidence was given that said the state of the bodies suggested they had been embedded in the sand, feet downwards and had only recently resurfaced.

The Whitsand Surf and Life Saving Club at the Spender Memorial (Photo: The Club)

The Whitsand Surf and Life Saving Club at the Spender Memorial (Photo: The Club)

The Whitsand Bay Surf Life Saving Club does a great job these days of minding the beach and making it safe for swimmers. I mentioned the various theories about the deaths and this is a selection of their replies:

Anthony Thorpe – “Biggest danger to swimmers is rip currents, usually at low tide. I’ve always heard they drowned by the rock below the monument – called Spender Rock. At high tide when there is a little bit of swell there can be a rip current that runs alongside this rock going out to sea – sounds most likely.”

Matt Keeble – “It’s pretty unlikely that they got their feet stuck in the sand and drowned. The rips are pretty bad there at times

Daniel Holley – “I would agree that rips are much more likely than feet in sand although waves could have been a contributing factor and might have seemed the cause to an onlooker.”

Adam Wooler – “It was more likely a rip current associated with the rock that prevented your (great) grandfather from being able to get to the shore. People have often said there is ‘quicksand’ at Whitsand Bay and this is what you may have heard too. However, in my experience you do get ‘mushy sand’ around the rocks in many places but this is caused by the rip currents stirring up the sand but I have never come across sand mushy enough to trap an adult.”

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Tregonhawke Memorial (Photo: Henry Spender)

Was it the sand, that ‘quicksand’ I had heard about when I was young? Was it the tide that just dragged the three of them out to sea? We don’t know. We never will. But every time a Spender takes a trip down to Cornwall, and feels tempted to stop by the memorial in Tregonhawke, you can be sure that they won’t be dipping a toe into the mighty Atlantic beyond.

©Barney Spender 2014

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